LOYA
Loya is the project that mixes traditional music from the Indian Ocean with electronic music.
His latest album FLOWER was recorded outdoors to be inspired by the sound of nature. His track Desi Volcano was recorded directly on the volcano Piton de la Fournaise in Reunion Island. He performs live and in Dj set.
For the past six years, Loya has been exploring the musical interiority of the sister islands in the Indian Ocean, helping to uniquely blur the lines between electronic and traditional music in the age of globalization.
Drawing from his modest childhood in the great cultural pot of La Réunion, Loya has an insatiable curiosity and the humility of a craftsman, quick to draw from the rough materials of his native island to produce a myriad of sounds. Thus, corrugated iron and tamarind wood join the tumultuous coincidences of machines and their algorithms, a legacy from his twenty-odd years living in the French Metropole.
Following in the footsteps of Ti Fock and other pioneers of electric maloya, Loya experienced his first electronic stirrings in the mid-1990s. He took the complex rhythmic constructions of Intelligent Dance Music and the dreamy soundscapes of Bleep Techno as inspiration to lay the foundation for his own music. In the course of his explorations, the machines can be tamed and eventually manage to evoke the trance states so dear to the Mascarene native, whose heart beats in a ternary rhythm.
From this travels through the twists and turns of contemporary electronic music, Loya retained a pointillist sound design and a tendency to experiment that he soon put to work in writing his first self-produced album, “Eruption” released in 2014, and the EP “Indian Ocean” released in 2016 on Mawimbi Records.
Exploring the blue space of the Indian Ocean with the naturalness of the island world, the ten compositions of “Corail” (expected in September 2018) unfold like an archipelago. Treasures of frenzied percussion instruments such as the ravane of the Mauritian Menwar and the “roulèr” of the traditional Maloya stand next to the velvety waves of the modular synthesizer, while the melodies of the accordion of the Malagasy Régis Gizavo ride in a frenetic rhythm reminiscent of Chicago footwork.
Here, there, or elsewhere, Loya’s music is an ode to the clear waters, to this “sea of lights” (Kenneth White) occupied by a multitude of islands shaped by these once enslaved or indentured peoples, now great laboratories of an evolving musical modernity.
Loya – Amba Feat. Menwar
Discography
Loya – FLOWER (2022) – LZ Records
Loya – Corail (LP, 2018) – Mawimbi Records
Baba Commandant – Wasso (Loya Remix) (2017) – Mawimbi Records
Tony Allen – Jealousy Disco Afro (Loya Remixes) (2017) – Comet Records
Loya – Tribute to Alain Peters (EP, 2017) – Mawimbi Records
Loya – Indian Ocean (EP, 2016) – Mawimbi Records
Pouvoir Magique – Eclipse (Loya « Tamil » Remix) (2016) – Mawimbi Records
Rafael Aragon – Aza Djouka (Loya Remix) (2015) – Babylon Records
Loya – Eruption (LP, 2014) – self production